ARTICLES
Written By Rich For You.
What Millennials Need To Know To Survive In Today's Marketplace.
There is no job for life anymore. Years ago, you studied, you went to college, you were a good boy/girl, you got a job, you worked in that job, you received raises/promotions, you retired with a pension, and you died.
No more.
It's WAY different out there not only for millennials, but for all workers.
The World Economic Forum has a new report out listing some of the areas of the world, industry and techniques to help workers succeed in today's marketplace. Here are some highlights:
- The job for life model is dead.
- There is a need to retool yourself and you should not expect to stop.
- We need a generation of workers who are hungry to learn and eager to keep pace with the times.
- Organizations across industries will look for curious, flexible, data-driven minds.
- Offer solid development opportunities which will instill the loyalty we’ve seen erode over the last few decades.
- Millennials will work hard if you develop the skills they need to advance and improve their long-term career prospects.
Bottom line — individuals, companies and even nations will see their skillsets become outdated. Technological change is a top global challenge — it is going to require extraordinary effort to keep pace. You need to integrate continuous learning into your workday — millennial, gen-x, gen-y, or even a boomer.
Take a class, learn online, play with KhanAcademy.com, read a book, listen to podcasts, audit lectures — DO SOMETHING.
I am encouraged by the attitude of younger workers who have set their sights on a regular and relentless pursuit of learning.
Check out the report here.
How OLD Are You? Generational Strengths & Weaknesses.
There are many positives and negatives with age during your career. Sometimes you have more energy and sometimes you have more experience. Other times, a new perspective or more gravitas. Even when managing your team, you need to take into account what their strengths and weaknesses are — and capitalize or anticipate them.
There are many positives and negatives with age during your career. Sometimes you have more energy and sometimes you have more experience. Other times, a new perspective or more gravitas. Even when managing your team, you need to take into account what their strengths and weaknesses are — and capitalize or anticipate them. In today's post, I'd like to highly generalize my experience, interpretations, and understanding of each generation. They might not (and probably not) fully compare to you — but they are a broad interpretation of the workforce in general.
In any event, different age groups act differently . . . so where are you?
Your 20's
Just starting out - getting your feet wet - absorbing, learning, winning, losing.
Strengths: Young, lots of energy, new ideas, enthusiasm, fresh perspectives. Technology: You easily adopt any new tool or product and start using it immediately.
Weaknesses: Little or no experience, frustrates easily, limited knowledge, lacking in sophisticated interpersonal skill applications. Doesn't fully understand impacts and implications of behavior or decisions. Personal issues: likes to party, meeting partners, stays out late/comes in late.
Your 30's
Getting better, knowing more, developing relationships, slowing understanding how the game is played.
Strengths: More stable, able to take on more responsibility, better knowledge & experience, lots of energy, ready to move up - starting management positions. This is where they start to define their business personality. Technology: On the burning edge of technology - the ability to adopt it and use it with good business sense.
Weaknesses: Ready to move up - but not there yet, sometimes pushes the wrong way, personal issues: getting married/kids.
Your 40's
On the glide path - the right mix of experience, knowledge and energy.
Strengths: Number of years of critical business experience, deep knowledge of industry, great presenter, building gravitas, understands the complexities of the business and interpersonal relationships, growing manager. Know when to hold their tongue - there's a bit more at stake. Technology: Leveraging many new and old tools - but the newer ones are perplexing you a bit.
Weaknesses: Knows how everything works in business and gets disgruntled. Challenges authority, Personal issues: kids growing/school AND mid-life crises.
Your 50's
At the height of your ability - leadership and management talents abound. You are a linchpin!
Strengths: Gravitas - you can enter almost any room or situation and handle it easily, you've seen it all - so your reaction time is shorter, nothing really fazes you, your contact sphere is phenomenal - you can connect with virtually anyone and get things done.
Weaknesses: Your energy level is starting to wane a bit, you're not as energetic and enthusiastic as you were in your 20's/30's. Highly critical of stupid decisions and can easily see solutions on the horizon. HR & corporate tend to devalue you - watch out for personel cuts. Personal issues: kids in college/possible issues with marriage/death of parents. Technology: Starting to let it go - missing out on new innovations that streamline and integrate work.
Your 60's
Coming down for a smooth landing.
Strengths: Everyone approaches to you for advice - you are THE sensei. Great management, leadership, and direction are like breathing. Companies should show you off to clients and give advice to prospects. Personal: Kids are out of the house and grown - you have the time to work late and travel.
Weaknesses: Your energy level is slowing way down - no more 10-12 hour days. You might miss faster moving objects - people, projects, technology. Especially technology: we tend to become luddites - we disregard new advances and stay with the old (comfort zone issues). Watch out for HR & Corporate - they love to eliminate your position instantly.
Your 70's, 80's, 90's
Enough already - unless you've perfected the perfect platform and formula for continuing work - time to take it easy.
How The Boomers Screwed Up OR We Can All Do Better.
I've been struggling with this generational paradox for the past 5-10 years and have asked a ton of people what they think about it. This theory comes closest to what I feel happened, is happening, and probably will happen.
I've been struggling with this generational paradox for the past 5-10 years and have asked a ton of people what they think about it. This theory comes closest to what I feel happened, is happening, and probably will happen. Enjoy! Here's my basic understanding of what went down (this is a long one — so stay with me — it's really important):
The generation that birthed the Baby Boomers suffered like hell. Depression, World War II; they shouldered everything.
So when the US was growing more successful following WWII, they didn't want their children to suffer. And their kids loved this. They lived in relative safety, had a clear boogeyman to fear in the USSR and ideology to love in the US of A. They got opportunities, whether to get jobs straight out of high school, or go to college, or travel the world, or whatever. Not everyone got this, of course, since we still did have poor souls shipped out to Vietnam.
They got awesome music, got to experiment with drugs, and then got jobs alongside their hardworking, nose-to-the-grindstone parents of the "Greatest Generation". And as those parents retired and died, we were left with a overwhelming number of coddled, spoiled children running the show.
And the problem with that is that they haven't grown up. They didn't understand the hardships that drove their parents' decisions. So they made decisions that didn't aim to avoid those hardships, which has saddled us with debt, terrible regulations of tons of industries, and a number of unwanted and unwinnable wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Drugs), which has led to Gen Xers and Millenials getting the short end of the stick, and being generally bitter about it.
Even a cursory glance at what we call the generations even gives some insight into the Boomers' thoughts toward their children compared to their parents. "Greatest Generation" vs. "Generation X". Past vs. future, and the future gets humped.
Now, that's not to say that every Boomer is like that. Plenty aren't. It's also not to say that this is a 100% correct reading of the situation, but it does seem to reflect what history has shown (so far) the Greatest Generation, Boomers, and Gen Xers to do.
I'm a firm believer in Strauss-Howe generational theory. We've repeated the same cycle of generational 'types' and social climes since the 1700's. Baby boomers are 'idealistic moralists' in favor of wars they themselves don't fight in, and they incite others to make sacrifices. The crisis they are driving us into will have to be dealt with by the scruffy, pragmatic Gen-Xers.
Here's the gist of the theory (from Wikipedia):
To date, Strauss and Howe have identified 25 generations in Anglo-American history, each with a corresponding archetype. The authors describe the archetypes as follows:
Prophet
Nomad
Nomad generations (recessive) are born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. Nomads grow up as under-protected children during this Awakening, come of age as alienated, post-Awakening adults, become pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and age into resilient post-Crisis elders.
Due to this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their adrift, alienated rising-adult years and their midlife years of pragmatic leadership. Their main societal contributions are in the area of liberty, survival and honor. Their best-known historical leaders include Nathaniel Bacon, William Stoughton, George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. These were shrewd realists who preferred individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems. (Examples among today’s living generations: Generation X.)
Hero
Artist
Artist generations (recessive) are born during a Crisis, a time when great dangers cut down social and political complexity in favor of public consensus, aggressive institutions, and an ethic of personal sacrifice. Artists grow up overprotected by adults preoccupied with the Crisis, come of age as the socialized and conformist young adults of a post-Crisis world, break out as process-oriented midlife leaders during an Awakening, and age into thoughtful post-Awakening elders.
Due to this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their quiet years of rising adulthood and their midlife years of flexible, consensus-building leadership. Their main societal contributions are in the area of expertise and due process. Their best-known historical leaders include William Shirley, Cadwallader Colden, John Quincy Adams,Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. These have been complex social technicians and advocates for fairness and inclusion. (Examples among today’s living generations: Silent and Homelanders.)
One reason why the cycle of archetypes recurs is that each youth generation tries to correct or compensate for what it perceives as the excesses of the midlife generation in power. For example, Boomers (a Prophet generation, whose strength is individualism, culture and values) raised Millennial children (a Hero generation, whose strength is in collective civic action). Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves, they create opposing archetypes.
As Strauss and Howe explain, “your generation isn’t like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you.” This also occurs because the societal role that feels freshest to each generation of youth is the role being vacated by a generation of elders that is passing away. In other words, a youth generation comes of age and defines its collective persona just as an opposing generational archetype is in its midlife peak of power, and the previous generation of their archetype is passing away.
By the way — I'm a boomer (a late boomer - born in 1962), but still a boomer.
P.S. I'm expecting a lot of hate mail on this one — but I encourage two-way communication — that's what this blog is about!
The Future of Work: When Gen X Runs the Show.
By 2019, Generation X — that relatively small cohort born from 1965 to 1978 — will have spent nearly two decades bumping up against a gray ceiling of boomers in senior decision-making jobs.
Presenting Part Eight of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine.
By Anne Fisher at Time.
By 2019, Generation X — that relatively small cohort born from 1965 to 1978 — will have spent nearly two decades bumping up against a gray ceiling of boomers in senior decision-making jobs. But that will end. Janet Reid, managing partner at Global Lead, a consulting firm that advises companies like PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, says, "In 2019, Gen X will finally be in charge. And they will make some big changes."
They'll have to, because the workforce Gen Xers will be leading will have altered almost beyond recognition. For one thing, Generation Y — the tattooed, techno-raised bunch born from 1979 to 2000 — is unlikely to follow in their parents' footsteps. They think putting in long years of effort at any one company in exchange for a series of raises and promotions is pointless — not that they'll get the chance. "Paying your dues, moving up slowly and getting the corner office — that's going away. In 10 years, it will be gone," says Bruce Tulgan, head of the consulting firm Rainmaker Thinking, based in New Haven, Conn., and author of a new book about managing Gen Y called Not Everyone Gets a Trophy. "Instead, success will be defined not by rank or seniority but by getting what matters to you personally," whether that's the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding. Tulgan adds, "Companies already want more short-term independent contractors and consultants and fewer traditional employees because contractors are cheaper. And seniority matters less and less as time goes on, because it's about the past, not the future."
Superannuated boomers won't vanish from the workplace altogether: people in their 60s and 70s — because of either need or desire — will be among the 40% of the U.S. workforce that will rent out its skills. "Boomers will be working part-time as coaches, strategists and consultants," predicts Joanne Sujansky, a co-author of a book due out in June called Keeping the Millennials. "By 2019, there will be many more of those opportunities than there are now because boomers will need the income and companies will need their expertise." Says Reid: "We'll see an increase in job-sharing at very senior levels.
You might have two boomers who share the job of chief financial officer, for instance, which lets them keep working and also have some leisure time."
The Gen X managers who will be holding all this together will need to be adept at a few things that earlier generations, with their more hierarchical management styles and relative geographical insularity, never really had to learn. One of those is collaborative decision-making that might involve team members scattered around the world, from Beijing to Barcelona to Boston, whom the nominal leader of a given project may never have met in person. "By 2019, every leader will have to be culturally dexterous on a global scale," says Reid. "A big part of that is knowing how to motivate and reward people who are very different from yourself."
They don't teach that in B school — at least not yet. In fact, Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees worldwide call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most gets to lead the team — until someone else contributes more. The game, which many Gen Yers learned as teens, is intensely collaborative, constantly demanding and often surprising. "It takes exactly the same skill set people will need more of in the future to collaborate on work projects," says Carter. "The kids are already doing it."
Watch Out Boomers - The Millennials Are Coming For Your Jobs.
Watch out, baby boomers. The Millennials are coming for your jobs.
Watch out, baby boomers. The Millennials are coming for your jobs.
By Nancy Johnston at The Baltimore Sun
This generational warfare is the story developing in the media, and as with most trend stories, it does have a kernel of truth. The baby boomer generation - born between 1946 and 1964 - has had a stranglehold on nearly every arena in American life, including politics, economics and the culture wars, since I was born. Even President Barack Obama, who campaigned on a promise to leave behind the boomers' old campus feuds, is, technically, one of them.
But with the rising technological wave changing the way we live, the way we work, and the way we think about the world around us, today's younger work force, born 1980 and after, is threatening the status quo. Even now, a coalition called 80 Million Strong is planning a D.C. summit in July to highlight this younger bloc, demanding that American leaders better serve this country's youth, both politically and economically.
"Today's 20-somethings are likely to be the first generation to not be better off than their parents." This is the first line of Economic State of Young America, a report released by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in New York City. And that's a troubling thesis for a generation that grew up being told they can do and be anything.
Sure, it's no surprise that with college tuition rising and job opportunities plummeting, the future isn't looking too bright for the youth of America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, after factoring for inflation, the average young white man in 2005 earned $35,100 a year, compared to $43,416 in 1976. While tuition at public universities has doubled since the 1980s, income has declined by 19 percent.
Those who can't afford college in the first place, or can't find employment after earning their degrees, have also helped raise the unemployment rate for Americans in the 16-24 age range 9 percentage points higher than the general population. Insurance and pension benefits are steadily shrinking, and no one my age labors under the belief that the dollars we send to the Social Security Administration over in Woodlawn will be waiting for us when we retire.
This recession isn't good for anybody. But blaming baby boomers for staying at the workplace at the expense of Millennials, or insisting that the youth are stealing jobs from their more experienced counterparts, are arguments far too simplistic to explain the destruction of the American dream.
If there's anything I've learned from the no-limits nature of the world that the Internet has wrought, it's that we do not live in a zero-sum society. We must foster an economy that provides jobs for everyone. From the traditional manufacturing and service jobs that have built the American middle class since after World War II, to the new "green" jobs and cyber-focused industries the Obama administration has declared a priority, there can and should be opportunities for everyone.
Yes, we need to make hard decisions now to address the problems the young and those not yet even born will inherit - climate change, Social Security and Medicare, the national debt. But setting them up as flash points in an ageist conflict between the me-generation boomers and the supposedly altruism-minded Millennials isn't going to accomplish that. The only way to solve those problems is to create an economic and social order that is fair to all - and the only way to agree on those hard choices is to embrace a political order in which all ages have a seat at the table.